American Express, Twitter Partner on Purchasing

The company has expanded its partnership with Twitter, which previously consisted of a daily deals program, to include the ability to buy products.

American Express announced it is teaming up with social media site Twitter to offer its cardholders the ability to purchase products from a select group of companies by tweeting special hashtags.

Amex customers who sync their eligible cards and tweet special #hashtags can buy American Express gift cards and products from Amazon, Sony, Urban Zen and Xbox 360. Users can sync their cards at sync.americanexpress.com.

American Express said the program is powered by its Card Sync technology. After tweeting with the specially designated hashtag, users then receive a personal Twitter response from the @AmexSync account within 15 minutes to confirm the purchase. All products will then be shipped to the customer's billing address via free two-day shipping, the company said.

American Express has had a partnership with Twitter since last March on a daily deals-type of program, where Amex card holders can tweet using customized hashtags, and couponless deals are loaded directly onto their cards.

"Based on the initial success of Amex Sync for offers, we know there is significant power in combining our assets with Twitter's platform to bring value to card members and merchants," said Leslie Berland, SVP, Digital Partnerships and Development at American Express, in a statement.

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio

This is an interesting development, but I don't know that it's earth-shattering. Users still have to find out what the hashtag is, tweet it, and confirm GÇö doesn't seem much easier than going to a retail site with one-click buying where you might get a better price.

Seems American Express has found a way to capitalize on the 140-character limit and still make it easy for customers to purchase items quickly and without hassle. When other users click the special hashtags (for instance, you see your friend tweeting a hashtag and are curious about what the hashtag means, so you click it yourself), does this encourage them to also sign up for the syncing service to their cards, too?